Category Archives: Exhibition

Bogged down and moving forward

Framed large prints — A bunch of 30 x 30 inch frames with 19 x 19 prints

Well, all fall I’ve been framing. The Red Jacket Inn in North Conway NH has purchased 304 framed photographs from me. So this has rather constrained my time. Far less camera time and time working up new photos — I just can’t let that be my priority. So that’s where I’ve been, oh loyal blog readers. Framing.

Several things have been interesting about this time! For one thing, I’m getting really good at framing. Just six months or so ago I would rather freak out any time I had to frame a large print. Now, though not without occasional frustration, it’s just something to move through. I’ve gone from completely dreading framing to almost enjoying it, o r even actually enjoying it. (Recently I’ve gotten a newer computer, which makes photography work much more enjoyable — however the new MacOS, Catalina, has broken some of my geekier development aspects. I have spent some time wrestling with coding and maintaining a development environment, moving some functions from using Ruby to using Node, etc, and I have to say that most of the time I’m doing that I would rather be framing!)

I’ve moved a tremendous amount of material, probably close to literally a ton of glass. If I do a job like this again I will have to remember that administration becomes a huge part of it. Counting stuff, moving stuff, keeping track of everything. That part of it becomes non trivial on this scale!

Another interesting thing is much much harder to explain. Usually when I’m working with photography there is an interplay between some kind of visionary call in my mind and spirit, technology (lenses and such), and then whatever in the external world is calling my eye. These three influence each other and either push together or pull on each other. There is a range between full synergy and one aspect becoming completely dominant.

I’m finding in these framing days, with far less time with a camera in my hands, it’s kind of funny that a pressure from the vision is emerging. There is a sort of dreamy background vision of imaginary photographs that want to be born. It’s hard to explain. It’s very abstract, not a sense of a particular object I would like to photograph, usually. It’s sort of a feeling and dance of dark and light and texture and energy. I’m realizing how often it gets lost in the distraction of actually working with images on the sensor and equipment and the duality of object and camera. One manifestation of this vision simmering away is a kind of Rembrandt-like light-within-dark. More like a vague dream than anything I can explain. Light within dark.

Ok, back to the framing room!

Sunapee Fair in Full Swing

John Lehet's Sunapee booth — My booth, 111 in Tent 1

I was wrong last week: I am not in booth 10, but booth 111!

I’ve been getting good response. I guess my best complement, not meant as such, was when a guy asked me what I do to make my images different from anything he’s ever seen before. Considering I’m showing a broad range of my work and representing all years (you can’t see in this photo, but I have a very big print in the back from a scan of 1981 4 x 5 sheet film and printed on my brand new Epson p7000 huge honking printer.) I’ve been finding that the big prints are getting a lot of the most serious attention.

The best thing, best thing of all has been the kindness of friends and strangers. My friends and family have been supportive in ways that melt me, and my fellow artists and crafts-people have also been kind to a somewhat surprising degree.

Come visit me at the fair!

Coming up! Sunapee Craft Fair!

I’ll be in booth 10 in tent 1 from August 7 through 11. Please come say hi!

The above image is one of many new ones that I’ll have with me as prints, an image I’ve never had hanging before. It’s hard to keep track of all the images I’ve got framed and matted, but I’ve been busy putting stuff together. My problem/virtue is that in the context of preparing for something like this I get very inspired to work on more images. I don’t know why this happens — I guess there is a space for the new visions to pour into. No show, and it seems that space isn’t there.

I’ve also been distracted by getting up to speed on my new Epson P7000. A client wants quite a few large prints, so it was worth getting the behemoth that can handle them. It should be a slight improvement in some ways in my future prints, though I’ll keep my old printer for as long as it runs. I’m finding that some papers and tones on some papers look a bit different on the new ink set, some better possibilities but also sometimes hard to hit the same notes with the same files using manufacturer’s profiles. At least some of the Canson profiles are a little different. Paper handling is certainly a big difference. I’ve got some 24″ wide rolls here and more on the way for my usual paper stock, so I’ll be making some bigger prints.

As usual, time is the big constraint in this life. It’s funny, somehow we feel there is not enough time. But we swim in an infinite ocean of time. It’s like a fish in the ocean saying there isn’t enough water. You know the feeling of not enough. I hope you also know the feeling of infinite space. I’m trying to remember to touch in with it.

A Tale of Two Exhibits

Ah, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It has been a busy rough stretch framing up about 37 prints now hanging between two shows: one at the EverSource corporate headquarters in Manchester, NH and one at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, NH.

One of my personal goals for these shows was simply to frame up some good work to have as inventory for the Lake Sunnapee crafts fair next August, so I made them completely different. The Eversource show is something of a “best of” show, some older work that I know is solid. The Dartmouth-Hitchcock show was a chance to stretch out. In fact, since I had a show of similar size there in 2015, I am hanging all new work that hadn’t hung there last time (including the image above).

Hanging a show is hard and exhausting, partly just the work of doing all the framing and matting, but then also at least I personally go through a kind of creative thrash. I’ve got a blank slate, and I can fill it with anything. That makes me start printing up new pieces like crazy. I have a lot of new work, a lot of stuff I didn’t even squeeze into this vast space I was given. I probably squeezed prints tighter, not giving them enough space to breath, because I wanted to hang so much. There are a lot of images waiting in the wings and still getting worked up. So that’s kind of an interesting process, and strangely different from my process when I’m not hanging a show.

Usually, if I’m not hanging a show, I’m excited about making exposures, but then I have a hard time printing up new work. The Photo of the Week is usually meant to put some pressure on myself to come up with something new, and it’s often hard. All of the huge backlog of work I’m excited about suddenly looks not good enough, when it’s time to pull one out for the Photo of the Week. And part of that has to do with the way I pair writing with the images. I will admit that over 70% of the time, I would guess, the photos I post on this blog happen because I’ve got something in my mind to write about, and there may be an image tied to the writing or one that fits somehow.

Hanging all the framed pieces on the empty walls is different: pure visual, no writing. I think that works actually better to grease my creative gears, even if writing may be part of my process as well. After all these years, it’s a mystery.

I’m thinking I will post a web page showing at least the Dartmouth Hitchcock show soon-ish, after I finish my taxes.

Anyway, check out one of these two shows if you can. They both hang for the next couple of months.

New Show, Manchester NH

This is just a short post/announcement, not my usual ramblings.

Yesterday I drove to Manchester NH to the EverSource corporate headquarters to deliver some photos. Ten photos, and actually none of it is newer work. In the first week of April I’ll hang a larger show at Dartmouth Hitchcock hospital in the same gallery I had a show a few years ago. I’m not hanging any of the same work (in the huge space), so this EverSource show had the pieces selected by default, sort of — work that wasn’t in the Hitchcock show. It’s something of a Greatest Hits Oldies show I guess.

This show happened through an invitation from the League of New Hampshire Crafts, who works with EverSource.

The interesting thing about hanging it was that it was professionally hung by Frank Graham, who does this for a living. I’ve never met a professional art-hanger before, so that was interesting. He’s a great guy, full of interesting stories, and also an old time darkroom/view camera user, as I was. Like me, he even used infrared sheet film a lot back in the old days, as well as a polaroid back that produced negatives as well as positives. Lots to talk about! And interesting that he gave the pieces so much space in this big room and nice space.

Anything not sold in this show (I don’t expect to sell very much in this corporate space) will be wall inventory for my booth at the Sunapee Fair, where I’ll have a booth in tent #1 from August 7 – 10. I’m also going to give an artist talk at EverSource, as yet unscheduled. So stay tuned for that.

Boxes Made of Butter

Of course, the shape of the photograph is important. I had stopped seeing panoramas and making them so much, partly because I was having trouble framing them so it would work. Using sturdier frames and better framing technique, and cutting my own glass I’m able to frame them in a sturdy way and without going (as) broke doing it. So I’m seeing them and printing them again. Yay! I’ll be hanging 3 panoramas at an upcoming show at the Eversource headquarters in Manchester NH through the spring, and also some different ones in the gallery in hallway 4F at Dartmouth Hitchcock medical center in Lebanon NH through April and May.

Part of what I like about the pano format is the way the eye can move in a different way. There is something a bit more free, call it “vast” feeling about the space, for me.

Compare to the extreme opposite, a square composition (which I also love, and used a lot in the days when I had added the use of a medium format film camera along with my 4 x 5 view camera main-axe. In this composition, as in many squares, the eye moves back in, it’s tighter, it feels more boxed-in. Which is OK. It’s always a box of some sort.

I think somehow the sense of composition within a box has a subtle pointer to outside of the box. It points to a bigger scene, and the boxed-in detail evokes a larger space. Since that larger space is here undefined, the space is purely mind. Our mind is bigger than the box.

When I was in college, I remember talking to a friend about people who were “in the boxes” and “out of the boxes.” (Where are you now, Steph?) In the boxes was our way of referring to purely conceptual, standard, and habitual ways of thinking. There was plenty of in the boxes thinking at Dartmouth when I was a student there. Out of the boxes was more emotional, less habitual, open to new experience and ideas. It was rather rarer. The thing is, you need the boxes in this world. We need concepts, defined ideas, a reality that works in its framework. But ultimately the truth has its home out of the boxes as well.

Since those days I’ve become a meditator and a Buddhist; I’ve lived a lot of my life in conceptual terms, I’ve composed photographs that exist in their limited spaces. But I’ve also rested in what Tibetan Buddhists would call “space,” embraced the view of emptiness. My teacher, Tsoknyi Rinpoche literally talked about the framing I’ve done here. To paraphrase (I’m working from memory of a retreat with him), “You need some boxes. That’s why we give you lots of boxes (concepts). But let’s have the boxes be made of butter, so they melt.” (We need to go beyond concept).

These new (and new-ish) photos are available for sale:

Four Birch Reflections in New Blue Ice

Dewy Garlic Scape and Roses

Orange Foliage Reflections Puddles, Riverbank Rock

See me at an Opening Tonight

Tonight at the League of New Hampshire Crafts Headquarters Gallery, in Concord New Hampshire, from 5 to 7:30.

One of three of my photos hanging in the show of new juried members into the League of NH Crafts is the one above, which I’ve never framed up before. It’s a 20 inch wide print in a 22 x 28 maple frame.

(a new photo of the week blog is coming soon!)

A busy week…

As the title says, it’s been a wild week. First priority, I had a jury for the League of New Hampshire Crafts. I had figured that since I live in Vermont, I wasn’t eligible. Also, they used to have a rule that only wet-process, darkroom prints were allowed. Now digital processes are OK, and I live close enough to the border that I am eligible.

I had to get a dozen perfect frames together. I almost made a dozen, but when I got a glass cut and blood on the front of the mat, on the morning before I headed down, I settled on 11.

It turns out it was great fun, talking to other serious photographers on the jury. Way more fun than I could have imagined it would be. And then even more fun when they told me I am accepted. We still have to get my work into the galleries, but it seems there’s a good chance you could see my work at any of the 8 or 9 League Galleries in New Hampshire in coming weeks and months.

So then the next day I had to follow through on a promise to hang a show at a restaurant in Randolph Vermont, The Black Krim. It was pretty wild getting the show together on the heels of the jury, and I hadn’t managed to see the space because of a family member’s health situation.

I got into Randolph in late afternoon to find it crawling with goblins, witches, ghosts, wizards, etc. Main street was closed. Right. Halloween. The owner of the Black Krim was on the front step, dishing out ice cream to a line of costumed kids of all ages. So the whole scene was kind of wild. Above, you can see Ascutney Mountain Through Bursting Maple Buds framed by the window, looking out on the slightly drizzly All Hallows Eve.

I had not been to Randolph for quite a few years, since I lived closer to that part of the world. It is quite a nice town, and The Black Krim looks like a wonderful restaurant. I can’t wait until we can manage to go dine there.

Post Pond Work and Rework

In working up the show of Post Pond images now hanging at Matt Brown Fine Art in Lyme NH, I of course had to over-work on it. Doing so was worth it. The show looks great!

So, I of course had to look through my catalog to find files I’ve never really printed before, and introduce them. I had taken a stab at the one above, an older exposure, but I think I hit it this time.

One of my favorite Post Pond photos, and one that is well liked when I show it, is this one of Pickerel Weed and Mist:

From the same set of exposures, I also made another print I like quite well, which I printed the same size (about 14 x 20). For such a close proximity in time and space, it has a very different feel, I think because I interpreted the file a bit differently and saw the color balance a bit differently. I like it quite well too:

Another image that I liked quite well but hadn’t ever been satisfied with a print until now was this one:

I like it because autumn is often dreamy and subtle like that. Though I personally am not always happy with punchy, saturated fall color prints, it’s harder to do the subtle thing. I guess as it always is. I haven’t been able to hit this one just right for some years, but I’m very happy now. Hanging in Lyme.

This one too, I am much happier with the current version than what I had done before. I think my eye as a photographer, when making exposures, is getting better, but I know my eye as a printer, working with files and paper, is getting much much better each year.

(Here is a collection of everything I am currently printing from Post Pond.)

In and Out of Time, Past and Present

I’ve been working hard on the upcoming Post Pond show, at Matt Brown Fine Art in Lyme New Hampshire. I’m excited to share the space with Matt’s woodblock prints, other great contemporary artists, and also old woodblock prints. Matt is collecting and dealing Kunisada woodblock prints, among others — those are really something.

Matt asked me to make a show of my time in Lyme and to focus it around Post Pond and its immediate watershed. I spent a lot of camera time around Post Pond, the meadows near it, and the inlet and outlet streams: Trout Brook and Clay Brook.

Poet Jim Schley and I are going to give a talk, roughly around the notion of Time. I touched on that in my last post.

Passing through time is always interesting, and certainly no less as a photographer. All those older images represent both a period of artistic development as well as emotional experience. Also of course a record of the world passing through time, weather and light and atmosphere, as well as physical artifacts like trees that will change. One big dead tree that is prominent in many of my photos of Trout Brook no longer exists. The leaning tree above is a different story. Above, in about 2006, that tree had been leaning for a while. Below, in 2016, it was a bridge across the stream, completely fallen. I don’t know how it survived last winter or spring’s high water. No doubt it is different still. As the Buddhists say, annicca, annicca; impermanence. Everything is impermanent. Especially the state of my mind in the early 2000s when I lived near that spot.

And yet, here are some photographs. A reflection of my mind when I lived there, a record of the phenomena in front of my camera, a print that exists and resonates in this moment — and, really, nothing at all. Illusion. But illusion fun to play with. All life is a dance with illusion, so let us dance onward.

Oh, and a news flash: I will be a featured artist at the rest area in Hartford on Route 5 in Vermont. Starting tomorrow, July 1, through the month. Those photos will not be Post Pond.